


kind of right

by preromantics



Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-12
Updated: 2010-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-10 02:12:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serial Killer AU, wherein Peter finds Neal after every murder he commits but doesn't arrest him. <i>Peter finds Neal in an abandoned warehouse three blocks from the murder.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	kind of right

**Author's Note:**

> SWC Ten. Continuation of the same verse featured in 'From You'.

Peter finds Neal in an abandoned warehouse three blocks from the murder -- this one had been particularly bloody, messier than Neal had ever been. It made Peter stop and stare in a way he wasn't used to taking anymore at murder scenes. The blood no longer phased him, the blank stares, the sheet-white bodies: now it was just the job, and if it happened to be a case he could connect to Neal then it was more than the job, it was something Peter obsessed over. (Over the man moreso than the cases, and he told himself that's not how it was supposed to go, that he was just as responsible for half these murders by letting Neal go each time -- he just. Couldn't, not now, not until the time was right.)

He knows this murder was Neal because Neal tipped him off, sneakily. A post card from a holiday in France, anonymously addressed, with the date only -- today's date. It hadn't had a location or a time, but when Peter had gotten the call today he knew instinctively that it would lead him to Neal again. He'd been apprehensively waiting for it all day, bottled up inside. The fact that he knew, that he was ready -- that he wanted to get the call altering him to a murder is a million different kinds of wrong that Peter doesn't want to think about, ever.

At the scene, though, he does take pause. It's wrong, too unclean for Neal -- there are splatters of blood up the pristine white wall in the foyer, red stains that frame the bottom half of a Monet that Peter is pretty sure is an original. The body lying on the floor fits Neal's victim profile perfectly, but the crime doesn't.

When Peter finds the business card tucked into the soil of a potted fern near the door, he knows he'll find Neal at the address listed on it. _Breston Publishing_ \-- a factory only a few blocks away that Peter knows hasn't been producing for two years now. He leaves after an appropriate amount of time, citing information and database collection -- a job that he could easily throw upon one of the unders, but always says he's going off to do anyway.

When he's leaving he hears someone, he recognizes the voice vaguely but he's focused on getting out the door and driving as quickly as he can to the warehouse. They're saying, "This doesn't look like Caffery, does it?" and Peter is momentarily relieved that it wasn't only him, that he hasn't yet reached a state of outright denial concerning Neal. One day, he will catch him. Cuff him and lock him up -- and he doesn't want to have denial that Neal really did murder all the people he has riding up his back. Not right now.

  
-

  
The inside of the warehouse is dark. There had been a fire inside two years before that Peter remembers being arson, because he'd worked on a murder on the docks nearby and the arson had happened only a week after the mysterious death. It didn't turn out to be connected, but the burnt-ash smell he remembers inside the factory still lingers, one mangled and burnt steel bookpress still sitting in the center.

It takes him a minute to scan the open space for Neal, squinting through the darkness. He's looking up against the walls, waiting to see Neal leaning against one of them, his hip cocked to the side, the tapered line of his waist an invitation and the smile on his face a repulsion in Peter's conscious all at once.

He's not leaning cockily against a wall, though -- instead, Peter's eyes find him on the floor, sitting in the corner with his knees against his chest, staring straight at Peter but without looking like he's really seeing anything.

Peter steps forward with hesitation; this scene is new. This Neal looks -- upset, a little more deranged with the frown on his face then he ever does with his triumphant smile post-murder. When he gets close enough, Peter can see that the only blood on Neal is on his hands, stained dark and dry with it over each of his palms. On the floor beside him are several imprints of his bloody palms, there is one on the metal warehouse wall next to his head.

"You're leaving prints," Peter says, because it's the first thing he thinks of.

Neal flinches when he looks up at Peter, almost so minutely that Peter doesn't catch it, but he does -- of course he does.

"I didn't do it," Neal says. His voice lacks any tone. "Peter, I didn't do it this time."

That's new -- too. Denial. Peter has never asked Neal outright if he's committed the murder. It's plausible deniability for himself. Maybe Neal had just always been there after each murder, maybe he had some fascination with them. (Peter never likes the things his brain came up with late at night; all the ways of getting Neal out of being convicted, of maybe working with Neal -- he was brilliant, Peter knew. He knew everything available on paper about Neal and he also knew the way Neal's mouth twisted when Peter scraped his blunt nails down Neal's back and left marks.)

"Then why are your hands covered in blood?" Peter asks. He's bent down facing Neal before he realizes he's gotten close enough -- when his knees hit the cold concrete floor they press against the tips of Neal's oil-shined loafers.

Neal closes his eyes and doesn't speak for a moment. Peter watches the way his eyes move in quick pulses under his lids, the way his eyelashes curve down and rest on top of his cheekbones.

"I walked in," Neal says, eyes still closed, "and the woman was already on the floor -- it was messy, there was blood everywhere."

He opens his eyes and reaches out a hand to Peter's shoulder, curling two fingers into his collar and just rubbing against the material there. The blood on Neal's finger's is dry and it rubs off in little pieces, falls down the breast of Peter's suit. Instead of pulling Peter forward by his collar like Peter expects, Neal closes his eyes and takes his hand back, breathing in.

"I'd never seen it like that," he continues, and all Peter can do is listen over the white noise in his mind, watch Neal's mouth as he talks, the way it's drawn down. "I guess -- it was horrible, is that what it looks like?"

Peter leans away a little. He doesn't know where he stands with Neal, here. This Neal is different. Usually they'd be against a wall by now, and Peter would be gripping at Neal's hips in a way he always hoped would leave big, blooming bruises, a reminder for Neal the next day. Peter wouldn't be thinking and Neal would be high from his murder, from whatever it did to his system that he could always block out, later.

("It's an addiction," Neal told him once, laughing. Peter had his cheek pressed sideways between Neal's shoulder blades, fucking into him in long strokes, the both of them bent over a table in an abandoned bar in lower Brooklyn.

"I don't think about until -- until I need to do it, all at once," Neal said, half between pants of breath. Peter could barely make sense of what he was saying at the time, but he could recite it all almost perfectly in his head, now. The only true insight into how Neal's mind worked that he'd ever gotten.

"I plan it out," Neal had said, and Peter had wanted to get a hand around Neal's cock just to shut him up, to get him to stop talking -- he didn't want to hear any admissions. Neal had continued, though, dragging the hand Peter had around his hip up around his throat instead, growling low, "try and make me stop talking this way, it's more effective, Burke, I promise."

Peter had squeezed tight but Neal had kept talking until he was gasping and Peter was coming, hips pressed and held hard against Neal from behind, deep inside, his hand tightening around Neal's cock until Neal came and shook, noticeably, his neck red with what Peter hoped would be bruises in the shape of Peter's fingers, just a little.)

Now, though, Neal has his eyes open again and is looking right at Peter.

Peter searches for an answer. "It doesn't always look like that," he says, not closing his eyes and giving into the catalog of memorized crime scene pictures he knows are attached to Neal's file. "Not with you, at least."

Neal's shoulders seem to relax backwards a little; Peter, surprisingly, hadn't even realized they were tense. "Other people -- it usually looks like that, though?"

Peter thinks about it, nods. The corner of Neal's mouth turns up just slightly and Peter knows he's probably proud of himself for being different, for being so neat.

Peter feels the weight of the handcuffs in his back pocket noticeably for the first time since being on the scene of the murder. He's always somewhat aware of them when he's around Neal; some part in the back of his mind is always reminding him how easy it would be to twist Neal's hands behind his back and just cuff him, once and for all, but he never does it.

This Neal, though -- the one who is just staring at Peter now, chest rising and falling under the crisp press of his white button up -- he's different.

Peter reaches back for the cuffs in his pocket and rolls his thumb over one inner-edge. He could do it this time, cuff Neal. The cuffs would probably bite into his wrists, leave marks he might feel for the first few days in prison. Peter would never visit him and find out though; people would suspect something if he visited Neal. Probably even if he turned him in now.

Something distinctly more Neal-like passes through his eyes when Peter looks up.

"Take them out," Neal says, his voice gaining back the tone to his voice that Peter knows, the tone that he thinks about late at night.

Peter feels momentarily caught, but he does take the cuffs out, slipping them out of his pocket and holding the silver cuffs folded under his palm.

"You'd do it?" Neal asks. "I've never seen you take them -- I know you always have them."

Peter sucks in a breath through his nose. "I would," he says. He wants to say, '_ask me_', but he doesn't. He thinks this off-version of Neal might ask him, if Peter was convincing enough.

Neal leans his head back against the wall, closes his eyes again. He's grinning now, though, the shift in his expression noticeable and for one brief second, Peter is relieved to see it. "I touched her, the woman," he says. "She was bleeding all over and I was angry. No one had the right to just walk in and -- it got all over my hands. So I ran down here. I'd dropped the card in the planter before I saw, when I walked in."

"You were angry?" Peter asks, because his skin feels weird, because he doesn't understand. He rolls the handcuffs around in his palm and the metal slowly warms under his fingers.

"Yes," Neal says. In one fluid motion he stands -- when he does, Peter is facing the seam of Neal's zipper, and to the right he notices the heavy outline of a gun in Neal's pants. He's never actually seen Neal with a weapon.

Peter follows him and stands less fluidly, if only to even them out. "Were you angry someone got there first?" he asks. He wants to know, too. All this time he thought Neal was -- desensitized like he was, in a way, to the murders. Except Peter wasn't the one committing them.

"No," Neal says. He thinks about it, his eyebrows coming together in the middle of his face. "Maybe." He laughs, loud for the space between them. "I don't actually know."

They stand facing each other for what feels like minutes. The handcuffs are dangling from Peter's fingers now -- they swing and hit his thigh occasionally. Neal's eyes catch on them and Peter watches his face, waits.

"Do it," Neal says. His tone is demanding, teasing. More, if not completely, like the Neal that Peter has always been faced with.

"No," Peter says. He doesn't mean to -- Neal is surrendering, he's asking, and all Peter can think is no, not yet.

Neal laughs again, loud -- it echoes around the warehouse this time. "Come on, Burke," he says, "Peter. Cuff me. I'm done."

"No you aren't," Peter says. It's psychological, Neal will never be done. Peter knows that like he knows left and right. He's told himself this too many times to count, lying in bed, body relaxed -- he couldn't change Neal because Neal is hard-wired. All the cases Peter deals with on a daily basis are proof of that: these murders, serial killers, they can't change. As much as Peter closes his eyes sometimes and wishes he had a different job that that he'd never met Neal, never followed his breadcrumbs, never let himself touch Neal that first time, watch the sweat on his palms wash away the blood.

(In a way, Peter knows, Neal is his fix in the way that the murders are Neal's. They both have an addiction that a psychologist wouldn't touch with a ten foot poll or a gun. Peter closes his eyes.)

"What are you doing?" Neal asks, voice low, -- all the different implications are clear.

Peter opens his eyes. Before him, Neal is looking at him curiously, almost concerned. It, Peter realizes, is a mirror of the same way he had been looking at Neal when Neal was on the floor.

"Put your gun on the floor," Peter says.

Neal raises an eyebrow. "I'm not going to kill you, Peter," he says. Then, after a pause, "I couldn't."

"Put your gun on the floor," Peter repeats. Something in him feels different, bubbling at the surface of his skin. It's almost like need, want -- he hasn't had Neal in over a month, not even a long time between them, considering the gaps in-between Neal's murders, but. He needs something.

Neal pauses for a second but complies. His gun is small and looks custom, because of course he would have the perfect gun for his hand, but Peter doesn't spare it more than a glance. It makes a metallic noise when Neal sets it on the floor, barely taking more than a second to bend.

"Take your shirt off," Peter says.

Neal laughs again, this time low. He takes his time unbuttoning each button of his shirt; he folds it, sets it next to the gun. Peter watches his skin, the movement of his muscles when he bends.

"Pants," Peter says.

"What are you doing?" Neal asks, an echo of before, a different meaning this time. He slips his slacks off, too, though, sets them neatly folded with his belt next to the gun and the shirt.

Peter doesn't know what he's doing. "Turn around," he says.

Neal complies. Peter usually does what Neal wants; rarely is it like this. Neal asks, _fuck me_, or _stay still, let me_ and Peter complies. Peter doesn't mind. As if not doing the ordering makes him less guilty. He can feel need creeping up his spine, though, watching Neal give in to his commands. Can feel it in his dick.

"Put your hands behind your back," Peter tells him. Neal does, and his shoulder blades flex, the muscles in his back moving in a way that makes Peter want to run his nails down them.

"You're going to do it," Neal says. He sounds almost shocked, but he holds his hands neatly together.

Peter takes a minute to look at the cuffs in his hand. He's pictured this before, but he's never pictured the actual locking of the cuffs.

He takes Neal's wrists and snaps one cuff on without hesitation. Neal shifts and it almost looks like he shivers; at the cold or at the sound or at the act itself, Peter doesn't know, but it makes him squeeze his eyes together for a second.

"The other one," Neal says. His voice is gritty.

Peter cuffs his other hand, and his time Neal lets out a little low moan. Peter pulls him against his chest by his cuffed wrists and bites down on Neal's neck. "Neal," he says. It's the only word in his head.

He turns Neal around, presses him backwards against the cold wall of the warehouse. He runs his nails down Neal's back and Neal arches forward, moans again.

"You'll never be done," Peter tells him, and Neal looks confused before Peter presses all the way against his front, clearly feeling where he's at-least half hard in his boxers, and kisses him open-mouthed and hard and messy.

Neal gasps when Peter presses back. Peter almost misses the feel of Neal's hands on his face, around his neck, pulling him closer. He feels light on the control though, and Neal looks up at him with a shine in his eyes.

"Fuck me," Neal says, an echo of his usual line.

"No," Peter says. "Don't ask me."

Neal's mouth parts a little, in shock or desire, Peter doesn't know. He bites at Neal's bottom lip and sucks it between his own -- he bites hard enough that he can taste a little metallic where he's broken the soft skin. Neal groans and presses forward, wobbles a little with his hands stuck behind his back.

Peter turns him around with a hand on Neal's shoulder, presses him forward into the wall, runs his teeth down Neal's neck to the top of his spine. With two hands he squeezes hard at Neal's hips, fingers digging into the flesh under his hipbones.

"Fuck," Neal says, low on a groan. Peter sucks a mark under Neal's hairline.

"Don't ask me," Peter says, making sure Neal knows. Neal nods against the wall.

Peter kneels down behind him, slides Neal's boxers down his hips to pool at the floor around his feet. He palms at Neal's ass cheeks, first, rolling his fingers over them and Neal spreads his legs out wider, rolls his shoulders and flexes his fingers where they are held in the cuffs. After just looking up at Neal's back for a moment, where his ass swells and then trims out into his waist, where his shoulders are tense, his spine bent forward, Peter spreads Neal's ass cheeks and leans forward, licks up from behind his balls, past his rim and up to the base of Neal's spine.

Neal groans, low, pitched a little high. Peter does it again, top to bottom, going a smaller distance on each up and down until he's just licking around Neal's rim, hard and slick, getting him wet. Out of the corner of his vision, Peter can see Neal's thighs tense and un-tense as he moves his tongue in pointed circles.

"Peter," Neal says.

Peter leans back on his heels, wipes the spit on his chin off with the back of his hand. "You don't have stuff this time," Peter says. He realized that in the back of his mind when he saw Neal on the floor, when he saw Neal still had his gun in his pocket.

Neal makes a low noise, leans forward into the wall, even though Peter is just digging his fingers in and out of the flesh of Neal's ass. "I don't," Neal says, "I wasn't ready, after --"

"Don't," Peter says, cutting him off. He sucks one of his own fingers between his lips, gets it slick and lets Neal hear the pop of it coming out of his mouth.

Spreading Neal wide again, Peter twists it inside him, curls up and pulls back down. He adds a second finger, watching the way Neal's body keeps curving towards the wall, his whole upper-body against it. He has his legs spread as much as he can while keeping balanced and his fingers keep curling and uncurling against his back.

Peter fucks him with the two fingers, wishes they had lube. He needs all of Neal right now, can still feel it everywhere, and it's almost ironic that this is the time he can't have him, that Neal didn't come ready. He watches Neal's fingers and then notices his wrists, the red marks there where the metal is biting into his skin -- there are matching red marks on his lower back too, crescents of color on his otherwise unblemished back. The sight makes Peter's eyes roll back, goes straight to his dick where it's hard in his pants.

He pulls his fingers out of Neal bending them at the knuckle and standing, grabbing at his own belt and zipper and then pressing forward into Neal when his dick is free.

He spits on his own hand, loud, and curls it around himself. Neal groans in front of him, slides further down the wall so he's bent, ass up and against Peter's dick almost before Peter can get his hand off himself.

Peter takes the invitation, (was going to do it anyway,) and he grabs Neal's hips, pulling him closer, pressing hard enough to bruise like before. His dick slips easily between Neal's ass cheeks, enough that Peter can rut forward, unthinking, moving his hips like he's fucking Neal.

Neal's hands keep hitting Peter's chest where they are still behind his back, the metal biting into Peter's skin and catching on the buttons of his shirt on almost every other thrust forward. Neal keeps up a steady pattern of groans, breathless. His hips are slick from Peter's palms.

"Peter," Neal says on a gasp. Peter bites at his shoulder from behind and reaches one hand down to curl around Neal's dick, hard and slick with pre-come at the head.

Neal only takes a few tugs to come, spine arching straight and voice groan going almost low enough to be non-existent. The arch of his back pushes him further against Peter's dick, his ass cheeks tensing around just enough to make it tighter. It's almost dry, too, and Peter pushes forward one more time and comes, biting into the same spot on Neal's shoulder when he comes, streaks of it up Neal's spine and then back down the cleft of his ass.

Neal groans; when Peter steps back, Neal is shaking a little against the wall. They are both silent while Peter does his pants back up, shirt still on.

"Going to turn me in like this?" Neal asks, still a little breathless with it. "Let everyone see what we do?" His wrists turn as much as they can in the cuffs and one side is bleeding a little, cut into.

Peter presses a hand lightly against Neal's shoulder and Neal turns. His face is -- he looks almost upset, a little hard. He's frowning just slightly at Peter.

"Neal," Peter says. It sounds like an admission. He grabs the key from his pocket, fumbles with it for a second, and unlocks Neal's handcuffs blindly, looking into his face. He drops them on the floor and the sound of them hitting the concrete echoes around the empty building.

As Neal brings his hands around, Peter takes them and looks at them, rubs circles into them with his thumb, careful of the broken skin on the one side.

"Peter, I --" Neal starts. Peter doesn't want to know what he has to say. He leans forward and kisses Neal softly, a bit of the metallic tang still lingering from where Neal's lip is split open.

"Don't," Peter says, when he breaks away. "Get dressed."

Neal doesn't comply this time, though. "No," he says. He darts forward, pulls Peter forward by his collar, all the blood mostly off his hands now, the dried red gathered in the lines of his palm just barely noticeable. He pulls Peter to him and looks at him for a second, too-close, before kissing him back, open-mouthed, wet, and hard.

Peter groans and can't remember if he made any noise while he was taking Neal at all. He wishes he knew.

Neal gets dressed, his back held stiffly -- Peter wants to rub the ache out of his shoulders, but he stays and stands against the wall, instead, watching. He stands next to Neal's dark hand print on the wall but doesn't look at it, and he thinks about coming back and cleaning the floor and the wall, wiping away all the traces that Neal -- that they, together -- were there.

"I don't know what I'll do now," Neal says, with a sad sort of smile in Peter's direction once he's dressed.

"You'll do what you always do," Peter says. The ease with which he can say that and be sure that Neal will kill again settles heavy and low in his gut.

Neal smiles. "Maybe," he says. He leaves his gun on the floor and walks out before Peter, doesn't even look back at him.

  
-

  
Peter goes through his cases for a month, for two months, for four and then six months. He doesn't get a single murder that looks like Neal, he doesn't get a message or a hint or a glimpse of Neal. When he goes to bed, his limbs feel heavy, and he tries not to think of anything at all when he palms his own dick -- only getting glimpses of skin, of reddened hands, of eyelashes when he comes, back sticking to his sheets.

He sits in his office and he gets a phone call, the caller ID citing an anonymous number. Before he picks it up, he feels in the way his fingers curl around the receiver that it's Neal, it has to be Neal. Or about Neal.

"Agent Burke," the voice on the other line says. It's not Neal, and Peter sits back in his chair, heavy. "Great news. We caught Caffrey," the voice continues, and Peter sits back up, "he was buying wine, his ID alerted the merchant and we happened to be two blocks down from the call. How quick can you get here?"

He sounds triumphant as anything and Peter wants nothing more then to wring his neck, make it so he can't speak again.

"I'll be there," Peter says. In his head, he's just saying _no_. He grabs his gun off his desk and after a pause grabs a second one from the drawers. He thinks about everything he knows about finger printing and DNA identification and how no one but him has ever actually seen Neal before, how they wouldn't know if all turned out to be an ID someone stole. If the man in the store really isn't Neal -- no one would know but Peter and Neal himself.

He thinks all the way down the elevator, in his car to the wine shop and then entering the door.

Neal catches his eyes but doesn't say anything.

"We're just about to send out his fingerprinting," Agent Marks says, the one who called Peter before. "I'll send West out with it, he's quick."

Peter stares at Neal for a second more then turns to the agent. "I'll take it," he says. "There's a lab in the area that can do it fast." He feels a little breathless when he says it, but his voice stays steady.

"Should we book him?" Marks asks. He's young, new to the field and higher up than he should be.

"Hold him here," Peter says, a command. Neal's eyebrow raises at him from across the room, but other than that he doesn't give any indication that he is their right or wrong Neal.

"I'll be a few minutes," Peter says. He looks noticeably at Neal. "This guy doesn't look like our guy," he says. "I know his profile in and out and -- would you think he fit?"

Marks looks over at Neal and shrugs. "I don't know," he says, "the test will tell us."

"I hope it is," Peter says, nodding, lying through his teeth.

He walks outside almost as quickly as he can. He crumbles up the plastic back holding Neal's fingerprint and a piece of his hair and throws it into a gutter around the block. He leans against his car when he gets to it, breathes in and out, and grins to himself. He pictures Neal's face, gets in his car, and figures out the rest of his plan.

He pictures Neal in the car beside him, making their escape; he thinks about taking Neal on his bed, slow, driving him into the sheets. He feels a million kinds of wrong and one, very strong, kind of right.


End file.
